Has anyone used a 12-month sabbatical as a trial run for early retirement?
I’m 43M, single and based in the UK, with total financial assets of around £1m. I have enough accessible savings to comfortably fund a year or more without employment income.
I’m increasingly considering pulling the trigger on early retirement, but I’m hesitant to make an immediate and irreversible decision to leave an established career. A 12-month unpaid sabbatical or career break seems like a sensible way to test it first: live on my intended retirement budget, see how I actually use the time, travel, focus on personal priorities, and then decide whether I genuinely want to retire or return to work.
I have worked for my current employer for more than ten years. It is a large US-headquartered multinational, but I haven’t discussed this with my manager or HR yet. I don’t want to reveal too much about my longer-term intentions before understanding whether such an arrangement is realistic.
My assumption is that a large multinational may be better able to accommodate one employee being away for a year than a smaller company, although I may be completely wrong about that. I also haven’t found much discussion on FIREUK about using a sabbatical as a bridge into possible early retirement.
Has anyone here done something similar?
- Did your employer agree to six or twelve months of unpaid leave?
- How did you present the request to your manager or HR?
- My employer’s internal policy appears to provide a right to return to the same role, or at least an equivalent role or grade. If your policy said something similar, how did it work in practice? Was your return genuinely guaranteed, or did it ultimately depend on a suitable vacancy being available?
- What happened to your continuous service, pension, benefits and redundancy entitlement?
- Did making the request affect how your employer viewed your commitment or future career?
- How far in advance did you raise it?
- Most importantly, did you eventually return to work or decide to retire?
My main concern isn’t whether I can afford to take a year away. It is whether an employer is realistically likely to approve such a request and how meaningful any right of return would be in practice.
I appreciate that every employer’s policy will be different, but I would be particularly interested in hearing about real UK experiences.